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What Does a Web Site Cost?
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One of the most common questions from businesspeople
interested in getting on the Web is, What does a Web site cost?
Simple question, tough to answer. Web sites vary greatly in size
and complexity. And other factors can have a big effect on the full
price of a Web site.
If we can't tell you exactly what a Web site costs, we can help
you understand where the costs lie so that you might be a more
informed consumer. We've put together six questions to ask yourself
in the early stages of planning your Web site. You might as well
ask them of yourself because as soon as you contact a Web site
developer, he's going to ask you pretty much the same questions.
Still insist on specific numbers? Ok. You can have a dozen pages
or so put together for about $1000. That may be enough to start
with for a small company with a limited product line. On the other
hand, large corporations spend several hundreds of thousands of
dollars developing their first Web site. And it wouldn't be unusual
to see a large corporation spending a few million dollars in initial
development plus the first year of operation (development--perhaps
better thought of as publishing--never stops). |
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What are you trying to do?
Many companies build Web sites because their competitors have Web
sites. If that's the extent of the motivation, then pretty much
any old Web site will do.
But companies making the best use of the Web consider who they
hope to reach through the Web site. Commonly there are several
audiences that must be served by the same site: customers and
investors are the most common, potential employees, suppliers
and the local community, are also common. How will each of these
audiences be served by the Web site? How will the company benefit
from serving these audiences? |
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What information will be needed?
Once you have made it clear what you intend to achieve through the
Web site, you can begin to be explicit about the information or
experience required of the site to accomplish the goals. Many companies
start off by putting annual reports and product descriptions on
the Web. The material is available, it's already been approved by
management: it's easy. But what's easy is not necessarily what would
be most useful for Web site visitors or most effective for the company.
Once you've decided on what you want to include in the Web site,
where will you get it? Do you already have the material in a convenient
form or will it have to be created? Keep two things in mind:
- Your Web site should continue to change over time. The site
on opening day can be simpler than the same site a year later.
- Creating new material for the Web site instead of repurposing
existing material is a costly proposition. It may be the best
route but repurposing should be considered first.
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How many pages?
If you have existing text documents to move to the Web, consider
how many Web pages they will be. Do you have an archive of news
releases and product sheets that should all be out there? How many
do you have? How should the documents be divided into Web pages?
One rule of thumb is that a visitor to your site with a 14.4 kbps
modem can download about 1KByte/second. So think about the size
of your pages in terms of how long it will take to download. A well
designed site will typically download pages in 30 seconds or less...that's
30 KBytes of text. If you're putting a 300 KByte product manual
on your Web site, estimate it as being ten 30 KByte pages plus one
more page that links to each of the ten sections. |
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How many graphics?
Graphics greatly enhance the appearance and sometimes the usability
of Web sites. So use them...Wisely! The problem with graphics is
that they tend to eat up download time. You may have a collection
of graphics available from print ads and product brochures. Maybe
you can use them, maybe not. Large photographic images can end up
being image files that take minutes to download. Remember the 30
second per page guideline? That includes graphics, too. So think
in terms of simple, small graphics.
With those thoughts in mind, think again about what graphics
you want to appear on your Web site. Are there some that appear
on every page such as a company logo? |
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How will you provide source materials?
Mechanical modification of source materials can be a significant
cost in Web site development. What format will your source materials
be provided in? Microsoft Word? That's good. Text files? That's
pretty good. Quark files? Not too bad. It's all on paper? Pretty
bad. You're pretty sure you know what you want to write? Ooooo,
very bad.
What about images? Have you designed the look of the pages and
know what images will go where? Or do you want your Web site developer
to help you with that? Are your images cropped and sized as you
want them to be and in Compuserve GIF or JPEG format? Very, very
good. Are they Photoshop or Corel images? Pretty good. Photos
that need to be scanned? Not too bad. Sketches of line drawings
on paper? Not bad at all--it's often more effective to create
new line art than to use existing line art that was developed
for another purpose. And another nice thing about line art: it
tends to compress very well making images that are quick to download.
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Will databases be involved?
Sometimes the pages for extensive Web sites are generated from a
database. If the information is either dynamic or highly regular,
the database solution may be the only feasible solution. The pages
of your site may be generated all at once in a batch job and stored
at the site, or they may be generated on demand when a visitor requests
a page. Or, maybe both. We implemented an example of both for a
site we built for Southern Comfort. The site had guides to a number
of U.S. cities which listed the best bars, CD stores, restaurants,
and so on for each city. In addition, visitors to the site were
encouraged to leave their comments about the bars, restaurants and
other places. We implemented the site to be both generated in batch
and on demand. The batch generation created all the pages for the
different categories of items that were presented and discussed
on the site. We created the batch page generator, then fed in the
data for Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, etc. The batch page generator
created the sections of the site for each city. Make a change in
design? Rerun the batch page generator and regenerate the whole
site.
The pages with visitor comments and discussions had to be generated
on the fly from a second series of databases. Discussions are
dynamic, of course, needing to change minute to minute, so pages
generated on demand were just the thing.
When thinking about your site, think in terms of databases and
generating pages. You may be able to reduce your development costs
with the batch generation of pages as described above. And you
may be able to increase the interactivity of the site as with
the database-driven discussions we used at Southern Comfort. |
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Will other kinds of programming be involved?
Creating simple Web pages with text and graphics is simple. More
capable sites can involve programming of various kinds. Some programs
run within the Web browser itself and are good for interactive features
on your pages. These programs are commonly written in such languages
as Java, JavaScript or ActiveX. Other programs are designed to run
on the server machine where the Web pages reside. These programs
do database operations, send e-mail, enter online purchases and
so on.
Programs have the potential to greatly improve the value of your
Web site. At the same time, they can greatly increase the cost
of the site. What would it cost to write programs? That's a more
undefined question even than the question, what would a Web site
cost? In the early design stages, give some consideration to how
programs, running either on the desktop or on the server, may
improve the Web site. Generally, someone with programming experience,
who knows what's possible and at what cost, should be involved
in thinking about these enhancements. |
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We don't have any of that stuff, but can't you
give us an estimate for budget purposes?
Sure. And there's even a way for it to make some sense. Locate another
site that's like what you want to implement. Lots of businesses
start out wanting to be at least as good as their competitor's sites,
so perhaps you choose one of their sites. But it doesn't have to
be your competitor's site--any site will do. Look for one about
the size of what you want, with graphics similar to what you want
and functionality similar to what you want. Answer the seven question
above for this site, as if it was yours. Your Web developer can
then analyze the site and give you an estimate of what he would
have charged to develop that site. Now you have an estimate for
your site for budget purposes even though you're not very far along
in your design process yet.
©1997, Harry Tennant & Associates |
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